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The Obama administration on Tuesday will publish a proposed rule that would give thousands of temporary and seasonal government workers access to the government’s health care program, even though current law would appear to prohibit them from using that program. The rule from the Office of Personnel Management would let these federal workers sign up for coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and also allow some of them to enjoy a government contribution to their insurance premiums. Both steps would be done through OPM’s proposed regulation, and not through an act of Congress. The proposed rule indicates that...

UNKNOWN QUESTIONER:“Um, you mentioned the Health Insurance Exchanges for the States. And it’s my understanding that if the States don’t provide them, that the Federal Government will provide them.”M.I.T. economics Prof. Jonathan Gruber:“Yeah, so these Health Insurance Exchanges —once you go on MA-HealthConnect.org and CRS [is] in Massachusetts—will be these new shopping places. And they’ll be the place that people go to get their subsidies for health insurance. “In the law it says [that] if States don’t provide them, the federal backstop will. The Federal Government has been sort-of slow in putting in this backstop, I think partially, because they...

The Obama administration will continue handing out Obamacare subsidies to federal exchange customers despite a federal court’s ruling Tuesday that the subsidies are illegal. A D.C. Court of Appeals panel ruled Tuesday morning that customers in the 36 states that didn’t establish their own exchange and use HealthCare.gov instead cannot be given premium tax credits, according to the text of the Affordable Care Act itself. (RELATED: Federal Court Takes Down Obamacare: Subsidies In Federal Exchange Are Illegal) But the White House said in response that it will continue handing out the billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies. White House press...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt a setback to the Affordable Care Act, ruling that premium subsidies provided through the federal health exchange in 36 states are invalid under the writing of the law.Here's the practical effect of the ruling, if it withstands the rest of the legal process: More than 5 million, generally low-income Americans who received tax credits through the federal exchange to purchase health insurance would see their premiums explode.Avalere Health, an independent healthcare firm, released an analysis last week showing that individuals who received premium subsidies for health insurance would see a premium hike of about...

Obamacare’s supporters have long insisted that it is the “law of the land,” implicitly suggesting that it is immutable and permanent. Evidently, it hasn’t occurred to these people to mention that to their dear leader. His Majesty, Barack I, obviously thinks of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as a collection of royal decrees, any one of which may be altered at his pleasure. Thus, in a proclamation issued last week through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, His Highness declared that all U.S. territories are now exempt from most of PPACA’s morass of rules and regulations. Neither...

As WSJ reports, last week's geopolitical chaos and distraction was ideal for a news dump, and the White House didn't disappoint: On no legal basis, all 4.5 million residents of the five U.S. territories were quietly released from ObamaCare. It seems the costs of healthcare soared in these five territories due to uneconomic mandates - which woul dhave been a disaster PR-wise for the administration and so, under cover of catastrophe, WSJ reports all of a sudden last week HHS discovered new powers after "a careful review of this situation and the relevant statutory language," that enabled them to 'selectively...

Buy now, pay later. That will be the epitaph on the tombstone of the Obama administration. The Congressional Budget Office, a research outfit that justifies government spending, is warning that while deficit may appear tame now-- comparatively speaking-- the budget path we are on is unsustainable. “The extended baseline projections show a substantial imbalance in the federal budget over the long term,” says the new CBO report, “with revenues falling well short of spending. As a result, budget deficits are projected to rise steadily and, by 2039, to push federal debt held by the public up to a percentage of...

<p>Chicago’s public health system is facing a massive $67 million shortfall after an early adoption of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion cost much more than expected, Crain’s Chicago Business reports.</p> <p>Cook County, which encompasses Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, made a deal with the Obama administration to get an early start on the health care law’s Medicaid expansion in 2012.</p>

Obamacare’s emphasis on cost-benefit has apparently granted permission for the medical technocrats to conjure all kinds of healthcare rationing schemes.And the Medical Establishment is apparently playing along. From, “The Cancer Death-Panel App,” by Robert Goldberg in the NY Post: The latest innovation in cancer care isn’t a medical breakthrough but an app to ration new drugs. It’ll measure care in terms of what it costs health plans, instead of what it means for patients’ lives.That it’s being developed under the auspices of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, the world’s leading oncology association, is a grim warning about...

In a recent Politico Magazine article titled, “Let’s Talk About Death Panels,” Harold Pollack urges reviving one of the most notorious proposals that did not make it into the Obama Health Car Law – “advance planning consultations.”During the debate over Obamacare’s enactment, there was considerable controversy over a provision in an early version under which health care providers would have been paid by Medicare to discuss with their patients whether they would want life-saving medical treatment.After former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin dubbed the planning sessions “death panels,” the provision was dropped from the law ultimately enacted.As Pollack...

After being without health insurance for two years, Miranda Childe of Hallandale Beach found a plan she could afford with financial aid from the government using the Affordable Care Act’s exchange. Childe, 60, bought an HMO plan from Humana, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, and received a membership card in time for her coverage to kick in on May 1st. But instead of being able to pick a primary care physician to coordinate her healthcare, Childe says she repeatedly ran into closed doors from South Florida doctors who are listed in her plan’s provider network but refused...

Buried in a largely overlooked government audit of the Obama-Care exchanges is a finding that casts still more doubt on the reliability of the 8 million enrollment number commonly cited by the administration and the press. In a section titled "Other Issues," an inspector general report released last week found that the HealthCare.gov marketplace couldn't show it had been reconciling its monthly enrollment numbers with insurance companies. That's despite the fact that the law specifically calls for this reconciliation, and the fact that, as the IG report notes, "the federal marketplace obtained the services of a contractor to reconcile enrollment...

Since 2013, complaints to the Department of Health and Human Services have risen regarding Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act violations. The number of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violation complaints received by the Department of Health and Human Services spiraled upward in 2013. Complaints are on a similar high-speed trajectory for 2014, according to analysis by TrueVault. "The number of complaints through May 2014 is up 20.6% over the number received through May in 2013, so we believe that we will continue to see complaints surge through 2014," Morgan Brown, vice president of growth at TrueVault, said...

As Americans scrambled ahead of the July Fourth holiday weekend on Thursday afternoon, the Department of Health and Human Services released 1,296 pages of new regulations dealing with payment rates to doctors and hospitals. The timing of the news release is part of a long pattern for President Obama's administration, which has often used holidays as an opportunity to dump dense regulatory changes when most reporters and Americans are focused on their holiday plans. The release came at 4:15 p.m. Last year, the Obama administration used the days surrounding the July 4th holiday as an opening to announce a delay...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Politico has a story today that might as well be called "The Democrat National Committee PR Site." "Why Liberals Are Abandoning the Obamacare Employer Mandate." Now, folks, this is so obvious as to be risible. For those of you in Rio Linda, it means laughable. The Politico is now pretending that the Democrats have changed their minds about the employer mandate, yeah, because, you know, you got an election coming up and the employer mandate -- providing health care -- employer mandate, we can't, oh, no, that's not gonna look good for us going into the election....

The Obama Administration continues to prioritize political success over people as evidenced in the rollout of the public face of Obamacare: Healthcare.gov. As of the end of February 2014, the Administration had spent $834 million developing a healthcare website that was flawed from the outset and allowed only a few million people to enroll for healthcare coverage, according to a new report by the minority staff of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Five days before Healthcare.gov opened last year, President Obama addressed Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland, promising that Obamacare would help the economy,...

Bias: You'd think that a government audit showing how ObamaCare couldn't tell whether millions of enrollees were eligible for the subsidies they're getting would be front-page news. Instead, the press hid it from view. If you wanted to read in the New York Times about these findings — which detailed rampant problems verifying eligibility and income information from millions of ObamaCare applicants — you had to dig 17 pages into the news section. In the Washington Post, the story was on page 11, after stop-the-press-stories like a change in House travel reporting rules and a puff piece on the new...

July 4, 2014 Revenge: Republicans to Strip $341 Million From IRS in Response to Scandals Pete Kasperowicz After months of frustration with the IRS over the targeting scandal and lost emails, House Republicans will exact some revenge next week by passing legislation that cuts the IRS operating budget by $341 million compared to current levels. GOP leaders plan to call up a spending bill for fiscal year 2015 that funds the IRS and other agencies, but singles out the IRS for the targeting scandal and other problems that have surfaced over the last few years. “The committee remains troubled by...

Nevada, buckle up. Over the next few months, you’ll learn how much your health insurance premiums will go up for next year. The early evidence isn’t good — the percentage increase could be in double digits. But that’s nothing compared with what you’ll face in 2017. In May, I released a comprehensive study showing how the Affordable Care Act will likely play out over the next few years. The diagnosis isn’t good. First, the short version. In two years, the ACA’s structural problems will lead to substantial premium increases. Once that happens, Nevadans will likely leave the insurance market in...

(CNSNews.com) – Despite expanded health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more people are going to hospital emergency rooms (ER) for treatment because they can’t get an appointment with a primary care physician, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). “Nearly half of emergency physicians responding to a poll are already seeing a rise in emergency visits since January 1 when expanded coverage under ACA began to take effect,” according to ACEP, which gives overall emergency care in the U.S. “a dismal D+ grade.” In addition, 86 percent “expect emergency visits to increase over the next...